User blog:Mel Hood/Latest News from HBM! Oct 11, 2013
New Economy Changes These changes are aimed to be released along with the "New Beginning" and New Monsters, on Thursday the 17th October. For the full post and comments visit: Producer-Michael's Notes on the New Economy __TOC__ News From Here Be Monsters Hello Trappers We’ve entered final testing for our big release next week and I wanted to explain some of the Economy changes you’re going to see in more detail. Short Version The short version is if you’re considering buying a Sparkle Rod, Backpack Upgrade or Barn - buy them now. The prices are going up. If you’re considering expanding your Homestead, the prices are coming down. Wait until the next release except for the Large Homestead which is rising in price from 40,000 to 50,000 . Long Version Below are more details on these pricing changes and then I’ll also explain more about the general changes to the game economy for those of you who are interested. Sparkle Rod The Sparkle Rod is increasing from 15 BN to 29 BN. We recommend buying one now if you’re considering it. Backpacks and Barns The biggest change to Backpacks is you will now need to upgrade your way through the Backpacks, rather than just buying any size at any time. This brings them into line with how the Land Expansions work. If you’re considering buying a bigger Backpack for either Coins or Banknotes, we recommend doing it before the price changes. Coin Backpack prices will be raised, example, the Ultimate Trapper Backpack (the largest available for coins) is going from 49,000 to 80,000 . However if you take into account that you need to upgrade through all of the coin Backpacks now, the actual coins spent will be more like 193,000 . So buy now Banknote Backpack prices are changing like this: - Compulsive Hoarder goes from 25 to 49 - Will O’ Wisp goes from 42 to 19 - Starium Backpack goes from 59 to 19 Remember that you will have to upgrade through those Backpacks now though, so you won’t be able to buy the Starium Backpack without first having purchased the Compulsive Hoarder and Will O’ Wisp Backpacks. Barn prices are changing like this: - Wooden Barn goes from 20 to 49 - Thatched Barn goes from 50 to 69 Land Expansions and Homestead Limits In general we’re making Land Expansions cheaper so we recommend not purchasing any Land Expansions until after the next release. There is one exception - the Large Homestead is the only one which will rise in price from 40 000 Coins to 50 000 Coins. We are also reducing the limits on what each size Homestead can support in terms of number of Animals, Farm Plots, Fruit Trees etc. We found the Homesteads were producing far more resources than you ever needed in the game. These changes are to try and bring your Homestead resource production more in line with what you need for quests, cooking your own food etc. But we also realized players are running out of space which makes decorating hard. In general Homesteads will support around half the number of Animals and one third of the Farm Plots and Fruit Trees that they used to. Note - no items will be removed from existing Homesteads, however if you go to add another Animal/Farm Plot/Fruit Tree etc you will be subject to the new Limits and maybe have to manually remove some items to make space for a new item of the same type. Also note that we’re making Animals much cheaper for coins (example: a Cow will be 400 instead of 2000 ) so that you don’t need to have so many of them on your Homestead, you can buy them easily when you need them for recipes. However we have also doubled the time they take to produce their relative harvests (so it’s slightly harder to keep stocked in Milk and Eggs but much cheaper to make meat based recipes). Land Expansion Coin prices There are some minor changes to Land Expansion coin prices: - Small Homestead is reduced from 10,000 to 5,000 - Medium Homestead remains at 20,000 - Large Homestead rises from 40,000 to 50,000 Land Expansion Banknote prices These are seeing the largest reductions to encourage more space for decorating. We recommend holding off on any of these purchases until after the release. - X-Large Homestead will be changing from 50 to 100,000 - Massive Homestead will be changing from 100 to 49 - Enormous Homestead goes from 150 to 19 This means an actual reduction in price of the Enormous Homestead from a total spend of 300 to just 68 . Why change the Economy? There are two main reasons we’re reworking the economy. The primary goal for both of these is to increase the amount of fun players are having (as always our main aim is for players to have fun, and then we hope you’ll spend some money with us). The first reason is to improve players coin balances, and the second reason is to alleviate frustration, by allowing more consumable items such as butterflies, fish etc to be purchased for Banknotes. Better Coin Balance Currently it’s very easy to have a coin balance in the hundreds of thousands with nothing to buy. Ideally we want players to feel like they’re earning coins and working towards purchasing something of value. This sense of progression is more fun than having a huge bank balance. We’re adjusting the coin value of most items in game. As always, we want Monster trapping to be your primary source of coin income. We’ve adjusted Monster rewards to make sure you’re always getting a profit from trapping them (currently, some Monsters are worth less than the bait you use to trap them and we’re fixing that). We’re also making changes to how you spend coins. In the current version of the game, quite often your new Trap plans and Workshop upgrade plans were simply given to you. In the new version, these plans will unlock and then need to be purchased for coins from Shops such as Eddie and Sons in London. Note that this won’t affect current players who already have these Traps or Workshops, but will affect new players. We’re also releasing more Decorations for coins. We’ve realized, in general that players don’t spend Banknotes on decorative items but we want you to enjoy them, so we’ll make more of them available for coins. We will keep some of the best ones as premium purchases (especially things like animated decorations) but we have reduced the prices for those as well to make them more attractive. And for Clothing we’ve reduced Banknote prices in general. Bridges? Yes. Finally, we’re going to make Success Potions a coin purchase as well. You’ll still be able to Gift and Craft these, but also you’ll be able to buy them directly for coins. Most Items available for Banknotes One of the biggest changes you’ll notice is almost all items in the Almanac will now be available to buy for Banknotes. This is not because we want you to buy everything!!!! We still want you to explore the world, collect everything and craft your own supplies but we realized at certain points players get stuck looking for an item. Instead of losing a player due to frustration, by letting items be purchased for Banknotes we can let players choose to skip their frustration point. We will never make things harder to ‘push’ you to buy an item.'' We make the game to be as much fun as possible (which should include some challenge), and then let you choose to spend money on it if you enjoy yourselves and want to support the game.'' For example, in the next release we’re making it easier to catch the Giant monsters after realizing they were too hard when originally released. We’re also tripling the rate that Goblins drop Mechanical Parts after hearing many of you were frustrated with trying to get these. We’re going to carefully monitor the sale of items via the Almanac - to make sure we don't lose that wonderful feeling of exploring the world and making discoveries for yourself. We hope that the fact these items are Banknotes will naturally prevent players from using them except when they’re really stuck or in a hurry. After you’ve played with the new version for a few days, do feel free to let us know your feedback. Remember purchasing these items is entirely optional and is there as a backup only, there will always be a way to obtain items for quests for free in the world like normal. Balancing will continue Those of you who have been playing with us from the beginning will know this already, but we will continue balancing these values. Especially as we release the new start to the game and have players who enter the new economy from scratch. With thousands of items in the game it’s also very possible we’ve made some errors along the way, so if you do see something which seems wrong, please let us know via feedback here on the Forums. Your help with this means we can keep making the game better and entertaining you for many years to come. Producer-Michael Category:Blog posts